BBM batting away rivals as it skyrockets on Android

Quickly climbing the ranks

BlackBerry might be in a bad place right now, but at least its messaging app seems to be proving a hit with Android and iOS users.

The BBM app has been downloaded over 20 million times on Android and iOS and Android data provided to BGR by Mobidia shows that BBM is pushing past its competitors.

According to the figures, use of BBM in the US stands at an average of 40 minutes a week in the week of October 20.

That's close to touching on Viber's 44-minute record and tearing ahead of Tango's 24-minute score. In other words, it's doing a lot better than we expected it would.

Hype hype hype

It's still not quite at the level of WhatsApp, which comes in at 160 minutes, or Kik's 106 minutes - unsurprising given the popularity of these messaging titans.

But for all we know, that BlackBerry figure could be even higher by now and could get another boost if it does eventually launch on Windows Phone.

Of course, it could also go the other way and die down once users get over the novelty of using BBM on a non-BlackBerry device, but right now it looks like users aren't just downloading it for a quick play-and-delete.